Jigisha Ghosh murder case: Justice delivered in letter and spirit, says probe team head

Senior police officer HGS Dhaliwal, whose team cracked the 2009 Jigisha murder case, termed on 's sentence to the three accused as "justice delivered in letter and spirit". A local court awarded death penalty to two convicts and life term to another for robbing and killing IT executive Jigisha Ghosh in New Delhi in 2009.

"The verdict in the case announced today by is justice delivered in letter and spirit," said the then DCP(South) whose team had investigated and arrested the accused within a week.

Dhaliwal, who is currently posted as deputy director general of Bureau of Civil Aviation Security of India, is no longer associated with Delhi Police but he has been in constant touch with Jigisha's parents and was present in the court when the verdict was delivered.

"Her parents thanked the police for cracking the case. They were under acute depression when the incident happened. Her mother says if not for police, she would have committed suicide. They had lost all motivation to live. We put a small team of lady constables and inspectors at their home just to support them in every sense," he said.

Jigisha's parents were kept informed of all the developments in the case and even though it was painful for them to hear what their child went through, they knew that the right people had been caught, the officer said.

Talking about the accused, Dhaliwal said, "They shared minute details and based on which there were substantial recoveries - the vehicle in which the crime was committed, the goods that were purchased. Even the credit card bill that the customer has to sign, their handwriting was verified. All those things are irrefutable. The CCTV footage was also recovered and all those things helped nail the culprits."

When the case was cracked, it was reported that a tattoo on the left wrist of one of the accused had helped the police catch them, but Dhaliwal said that traditional beat policing did the trick.

"The tattoo had got a lot of traction. This was a case where lot of beat policing came into play. We had a combined meeting of all the police stations and we distributed coloured photographs of the accused to all the beat officers. Normally, there are pictures of wanted criminals pasted randomly on walls and people don't pay heed to them but our staff carried the pictures of the accused for two days and would tell people how valuable their input would be. The input also came from a beat officer saying that he had seen someone similar to the man in the photograph in Vasant Kunj area. We developed those leads and when we caught them they told us the chronology of the events."

28-year-old Jigisha, working as an operations manager in a management consultancy firm, was abducted and killed on March 18, 2009 after she was dropped by her office cab in the wee hours near her home in Vasant Vihar area of South Delhi.